Argg I'm 472 words into my 50,000 word novel and already the voices of doubt and resistance are screaming in my head. That's ok ... we'll make it ... those voices and I will have a chat ... and they will come to understand their place ... all in good time.

In the mean time I thought I'd stop by and fulfill one of my other goals. A daily post to my blog ... so ... I have a secret that I've been meaning to share. I'm not happy with Flick'r. Sure, I'm using their free service. And I'm not complaining that they limit how much I can upload each month. I'm not complaining that they've gotten all persnickety and up-itty-up snobbish about photos vs art uploads. I think it's ridiculous but I'm not saying that that is a cause to leave. What I'm aggravated about is that I can't organize the photos that I do have up.

First problem is that free Flick'r accounts are only allowed to create three albums or sets. There are ways to work around this ... and there are nice benefits to staying put and working around this ... but still it is exceedingly annoying. But here's the final straw ... the one that has me looking around ... the one that has me thinking ... "If I'm going to have to pay to get what I want ... I'm bloody-well gonna find a place where I'm getting what I need."

This is the last straw: When I upload images, the images get scrambled ... well you know me ... I've got to be telling a story with my pics ... and stories have an order! I can spend hours arranging them just so but Flick'r does whatever it wants. Oh yes sure supposedly I can rearrange the images ... as long as they're in a set ... and as long as you don't look at them in the slide show option. Sigh.

So after I wrote the above ... I did the following ... then I wrote enough to fill my NaNoWriMo word quota for the day ... and now I'm writing the following.

I downloaded the latest and greatest Picasa2 from Google. I remembered again that I really do like Picasa ... and I played with Google's new Picasa Web Albums. There's not an established community at Google. I have to bring in a community ... although they do have a fave system so it wouldn't be too difficult because Lord knows I know people who have just one (ha) Google Account (oh yeah ... this is another Google tool you can use without first setting up a Gmail account) and Google Account owners can make comments on photos in public albums. BUT anybody can view the images (as long as they are set to public).

But let me tell you what else I like about Google. I love being able to fine tune my images with Picasa and then being able to define my album on my pc (without the Internet) and then upload the images. I love that what I upload is what I see in my online album – in the order that i pre-established ... and if I rearrange their order, they stay re-arranged. I also prefer the Picasa Web Album slide show over Flick'r slide show. There can be funny moments when Google's tool first presents the image very pixelated but fairly quickly it deciphers the correct image and presents it. I only had this happen a couple of times and it was on the first viewing of the album.

The Picasa2 upload tool assumes that I want to upload images with at least one side equaling 1240 pixels min although I could choose 1600 or full size. But I upload with a max side of 800 pixels because of my friends and family who for one reason or another are stuck on in dial-up mode. 800 means that they'll probably be able to see at least 1.5 per min. Yes, I know ... that's really slow ... us speed freaks tend to forget how slow dial-up really is.

But not having a lower pixel size option in the upload tool is no biggy. I just export my offline album into a new folder ... in the export I get to set both the size and the quality of the image being exported. Then I just tell the Picasa2 upload tool to upload the full size image. Piece of cake. Most people would never be this picky anyway.

So ... are you getting confused trying to track all this in your head? Me too! It's obviously time for a spreadsheet. Enter ... Google's Spreadsheets ... this way you can see it online as it progresses. Comparing Photo album Sharing Free and Pay. You must be logged in to your Google Account in order to view it.

There are a lot of other free/pay services ... I'm going to try them out ... one at a time ... maybe or maybe not during this month.

But in the mean time would you please do me a favor. I have nearly duplicate albums up at Flick'r and at Picasa. Would you go and see what you think of them as my guest? Yes, as a guest which one do you enjoy? They're both public so you shouldn't have any trouble viewing. The Picasa Web Album has eight more images of the Appalachian Trail than the Flick'r does. But then I have more albums at Flick'r.

My Picasa Web Albums

My Flick'r Albums

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